


The Right Moment

by fardareismai



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5580082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. -James Levine.  </p><p>Rose Tyler meets a stranger in Paris who teaches her more than she ever expected.  Nine/Rose human AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started with a prompt on Tumblr from one of my favorite people: PerfectlyRose. She asked for "tourist/knowledgeable local au" which started us down this rabbit hole...

Rose couldn’t help grinning to herself as she listened to the man behind her bartering in awkward (and oddly-accented) French with the serveur who was about to charge him double just for being a tourist.

She’d been at the London University in Paris for three years, and while no proper Parisian would allow her to be anything but an Englishwoman, her French had come a long way in those hard-working years, and she rarely made the mistakes of verb that the man behind her in the cafe was making.

Finally, with a sigh of sympathy for her fellow countryman, she turned and engaged the serveur, explaining that the man he was cheating was defended.

When that worthy had given up trying to get the better of the foreigners, Rose finally turned to look at the recipient of her generous nature.

“Blimey,” she thought, finally getting a look.  “He’s a bit of all right.”

He was older than her by several years, but it was France, and that didn’t matter.  Unlike most of the men she’d met in Paris, however, he wasn’t pretty.  He was raw-boned and rangy, and just a bit primitive.  He looked like a sculpture, and Rose’s fingers twitched for a pencil to capture that compelling face with it’s stark cheekbones and vivid eyes.

“Sorry,” he said in English, and she discovered that his accent hailed from somewhere in the North of England.  “Been too long since I went traveling.  I’m out of practice.  Good of you to save me.”

“He was being a snot,” Rose said, sitting across from him at the table and grinning.

“Oh, you are English.”  The man sounded surprised.  “I had wondered why a Parisian would bother helping me out.”

“They’re not all bad,” Rose said, shrugging.  “They’re just… French.  You here on holiday then?”

“Something like that.  You?”

“I study at the university.”

“Oh, right, so I suppose you’ve something to go back to.  Classes or… friends or… maybe a boyfriend?”

Rose knew an information-gathering session when she heard it and grinned.

“Nope, free as the proverbial bird.  But what about you then?  No tour group to keep up with?”

“What’s the point of traveling if you stick to the guide book?  Hey… if you don’t have somewhere else to be, could you help me out?  I need to find a place to buy a hat  My sister, Donna her name is, she’s mad for hats.”

“Actually, I know just the place!  Come on then.”  Rose stood and grabbed the stranger’s hand to tug him down the street.

~?~?~?~?~

Four hours later, when he kissed her in the dying sunlight over the Seine, they weren’t precisely strangers, but Rose still didn’t know his name.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We continued with a prompt from fleurdeneuf who asked for "teacher/student au"

Rose sighed to herself in bliss as she settled into her seat in her literature class.  It had been a glorious weekend, but now it was time to return to real life.

Her friend from the coffee shop had kissed like a god, and the pair of them had found their way back to her flat within hours.

They had opened a bottle of wine and their kisses had been interspersed with talk and drink.

They’d finally exchanged first names after he’d worked her jumper off and was well on his way to ridding her of her bra.  She decided that she couldn’t do what she was clearly about to do with a completely anonymous stranger.

“Rose,” she had gasped when he had put his mouth to her right nipple. 

He had looked up, raising a dark brow over one ice-blue eye.

“’Smy name.  Rose.”

He had grinned then.  “Nice to meet you, Rose.  I’m Claude.”

“Pleasure,” she said.

And that was precisely what he had done.  They hadn’t left her flat for nearly 48 hours and she was now aching and tender in some rather unaccustomed places, but she couldn’t be sorry.  It had been like a dream.

That dream crashed its way soundly back into reality at the sound of the lecturer’s voice.

“My name is Doctor Claude Foreman.  Professor McCrimmon has had to take a leave of absence and I will be taking over his class for the time being.  You can call me Doctor, if you like.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We then continued with an anonymous prompter who asked for "literally bumping into each other au"

The Doctor (and what kind of stupid name was that, Rose thought, annoyed) went through the roll.  He glanced up and smiled at each person who said they were present, and Rose’s heart began to speed up.  What would happen if she looked at him again… in _this_ setting.

Not a damned thing is what happened.  He skipped her name completely.

Rose wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or offended.  He could have done it on accident, but she was pretty sure that he had not.

She scarcely listened to the lecture about Dumas, though she did catch enough to notice that the Doctor was far more engaging than their previous professor.  When Dr. Foreman dismissed them, Rose already had her books gathered and was halfway out the door.

She rushed toward the literature department, paying not the slightest bit of attention, only to be brought up short by a large, leather-clad, very solid object.

“Perhaps you should watch where you’re going,” the very familiar voice said with a sardonic intonation.  “Were you looking for me?”

Rose glared up at him from where she had knelt to pick up her dropped books. “Hardly.  I’m looking for the registrar.  I’m dropping your class.”

He raised a single eyebrow.  “Was it something I said.”

Rose stood in a shot, and while she was still several inches below him, she felt better as she glared him down.

“Listen you,” she hissed quietly but intensely, knowing that at a university, every wall could have ears.  “I am six months from graduating and I will not be taken up on disciplinary charges and lose my place for anything, do you understand that?”

He blinked at her intensity and, for the first time, his mask of icy sarcasm melted away, and he was the man she’d taken into her bed and (if she were honest with herself) into her heart that weekend.

“You’re right,” he said, sounding ashamed.  “I’m sorry.  I… I should have walked away as soon as you said you were a student here.”

“Damn right you should have.  Someday you’ll tell me why you didn’t, but not yet.”

Blue eyes met brown in sharp, almost electric understanding.

“Six months, you said?”

Rose nodded.  “Six months.  Think you can wait that long?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We continue with another prompt from Fleurdeneuf, "meeting at a coffee shop au"

Rose could feel him.  From the moment the little silver bell at the top of the door to the cafe rang, she knew it would be him.  She had her back to the door and she knew.  She always knew when he was nearby.

The registrar hadn’t allowed her to drop his class without sacrificing her graduation date so she saw him, like it or not, three times a week.  That was quite enough of that for her, and yet she seemed to run across him an inordinate amount between classes.

If she didn’t know better, she might think the Doctor was stalking her.

She was annoyed that he had found her cafe, however.  It was far enough from the school that the English students didn’t often find it, so it was mostly populated with locals, allowing Rose to soak in the proper Paris vibe without having to hare across the city to do so.

She could feel the tension coming from him from across the room.  So he hadn’t gone here looking for her, she thought, still refusing to turn around.  Perhaps he had come to the cafe hoping to avoid her.

“Un café noir” he said to the girl working the counter.

Rose smirked into her own cup.  She wondered if he was about to get what he thought he was going to get.

Sure enough, as seemed to happen to every transplant to the city at least once, the Doctor seemed surprised when he was given a tiny cup of espresso rather than the mug of coffee he’d been expecting.

Where before she had tried to save him from his own mistakes, Rose polished off her own café noir (which she had learned to enjoy since moving to the continent) and left him arguing it out with the barista.

Just three more months, she thought.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we conclude with a final prompt from captaingrahamcr who asked for both "meeting on a train ride au" and "literally bumping into each other au"

Rose closed the e-mail and leaned back in her computer chair considering what the words meant.

Graduation confirmation.  Save for the official receipt of her diploma, she was done.  She was no longer a student of the University of London, Paris.

She was no longer a student of Dr. Claude Foreman.

She had to tell him.

The trouble was that she didn’t know where to find him.  He wasn’t in the literature building.  He wasn’t in the cafe that she’d seen him failing to order coffee.  He wasn’t even in the cafe where she’d met him.

He wasn’t in the park where she’d occasionally seen him walking.  He wasn’t in the library where she’d once walked smack into him reaching up for a compendium of Dickens on a top shelf.

She didn’t know where else to look, so she cleaned up her apartment and went to the train station.

Naturally because, if the last six months were anything to judge, he was always going to find her when she least wanted to see him, he found her there.

He stood awkward- all long-limbed and big-eyed, so much younger-looking than he actually was.

“Are you… where are you going?” he asked, after staring at her for a very long time.

“Home,” Rose said shortly.

His face underwent a quick, fearful change before he got himself back under control.  “Back to England then?”

“That’s home,” Rose said.  “I’ll bring my mum back for commencement and then…”

“You’ll go back to England for good then,” he finished for her, sounding resentful.

“No.  Then I’ll send her home and start my new job curating one of the small galleries in the arts district.”

She’d had a guess that this revelation would shock him, but he surpassed even her expectations.

He said nothing just stepped closer to her, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.

“Been wanting to do that for six months,” he said after several minutes when they both stood, breathless, staring at each other through shocked and lust-hazed eyes.  “You’re not my student anymore.”

“I’m not.”

“When you come back…”

“You’ll tell me why you didn’t walk away that first day when you found out I was a student.”

“Yeah… I’ll do that first.”

~?~?~?~?~

“I looked at you and it was like looking at the sun off the river- so bright you can barely stand it, but so beautiful you can’t look away.”

They were sitting in her flat two days after commencement.  Rose had a bottle of wine in her fridge and a fresh pack of condoms in her bedside drawer, but until the Doctor explained himself, he would see neither.

“I’d always been told that life was just… go to work, get married, have kids, and that’s it.  But seeing you made me think that maybe… maybe it’s bigger than that, and darker than that, and madder than that.  Maybe it’s better than that.”

He sighed, and looked down at his hands.

“I thought I’d adventured before, but you… you were my greatest adventure.  You were my chance to break the rules and see where it took me.”

He looked up at her, his blue eyes burning like flame.

“And it took me exactly where I wanted to be, Rose Tyler.  That weekend with you, I knew.  I don’t know how I knew, but I knew.  I wanted you, not just for a night or a weekend or a year.  I want you forever.”

“You didn’t know me.”

“I still don’t, not the way I want to, but dear god, I want to.”

He sat still as a statue as Rose considered what he’d said.  She hadn’t been able to think of anyone else.  Not Adam the handsome history major who had asked her to study with him.  Not Jack the playboy who had taken her dancing.  Not Mickey at home.  No one had dominated her thoughts the way her professor had.  Not in years.

She wanted too.

“I’m not an adventure.  I’m beans on toast and bad telly and a nine-to-five job.  I’m…”

“You’re the Seine under the setting sun and the wrong verbs in a French cafe and espresso when I expected coffee.  Rose Tyler, no matter what else you are, you are an adventure.”

And somehow, that sealed it.

He made her cry out with his mouth between her legs there on the couch.  He took her with wild abandon on her bed.  When they finally got to food and wine, he did not stop touching her and made her come with his fingers as they sat at her tiny breakfast table and ate leftover pasta her mother had made.

“Rose Tyler,” he said, “if I had a time machine, I’d go back and take a job at a different university in Paris so that we wouldn’t have to wait.  I’d find you years ago.  I would have kept you forever and ever.”

Rose gasped as he rode over her, pushing inside her yet again to the point that she thought she might break or might weep at the beauty and the pleasure of it.

“Doctor,” she cried, as she had done to her own fingers at her sex for half a year.

“No, Rose.  Please… my name.  Like you used to.”

“Claude,” she said, nearly sobbing.

He let her fall over the edge.

As she fell asleep with her head on his chest, she heard him whispering into her hair.

“And if it were a choice between the world and you, Rose Tyler- you and all of time and space- I would choose you every time.”

“And I would stop you,” she murmured as she fell asleep on the first day of the greatest adventure of her life.


End file.
